[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: haskell-debian vs. newest HaXml



On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 06:12:14PM +1000, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
> I've looked at the  HaXml entry on Hackage and I can see no  indication that
> 1.19.7 is  anything other than the current version. AFAICS, the only thing that
> makes 1.19.7 unstable is that this is the version of the package in Debian
> unstable while Debian testing and stable have the older version.

The HaXML web page at http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/HaXml/ calls 1.19 the
"development version", and links to the page
http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/HaXml-devel/ which says that version's API "may be
incomplete, inconsistent, and liable to change".  I'd call that "unstable", and
I wouldn't want to write code against unstable interfaces when I can avoid
them.

You can't use the Hackage packaging choices as a model.  Hackage and Cabal both
handle multiple coexisting versions gracefully, while Debian only allows one
version of a package on a system.

> As such, I think the solution to this issue is to do a package named HaXml1.13
> and keep the HaXml package tracking the latest Hackage version.

I'd recommend against that.  There's no reason to continue breaking existing
packages.  The 1.19 version should be called haxml-devel, following upstream's
lead.

> However, I'm a little unsure how to make HaXml1.13 and HaXml (1.19.X)
> coexist or if they should conflict with one another.

I'm pretty sure Cabal allows installing both - at least GHC package system is
version aware and allows activating and deactivating installed versions on
demand.

-- 
Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho, Jyväskylä, Finland
http://antti-juhani.kaijanaho.fi/newblog/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/antti-juhani/


Reply to: